I came across this the other day when I was reading. It was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
“If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes and the light which experience gives us, is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind.”
Just think about what this is telling us today, at a time and a place where Democrats are hell bent on vengeance and Republicans are vowing to make life as miserable as they can for the other party. Who’s going to pay the price? You and I are, my friends. We have been down this road before but each time it gets worse. More vengeful, more hostile, more lies and more corruption. There will come a time when the hostilities will become more open. No more. “I’m sorrys,” no more patching things up. No more talk of cooperation and bipartisanship and when that time comes — and it might be sooner than you think — turn out the lights the party’s over.
We need a do over and soon. Oh, if only, we could magically fire the lot of them and replace them with reasonable, responsible people who would make the hard decisions about spending and the direction this country is going to take. Many brave people died for the sake of this country over the years. Maybe the question that needs to be asked to those who seem to put their selfish political gains in front of their own country’s well-being is, “Were you even worth that sacrifice?”
It is hard to write like this but there needs to be some accountability. George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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Mike Holst
Crosslake
